1. The launch of the John Cage competition, which aims to identify and award the most creative interpretation of the composer’s work
2. Concerts:
- John Cage “Imaginary Landscape No. 4”, Krzysztof Knittel "Of what does not exist"
Performers: students of the Karol Lipiński Primary and Secondary Music School of Lublin, conducted by Krzysztof Knittel (Poland)
- „wind child Index” - eRikm (France), dieb13 (Austria)
Free admission.
The launch of the John Cage competition aiming to identify and award the most creative interpretation of the composer’s work.
Curator: Michał Mendyk
The purpose of the competition is to challenge musicians to interpret or paraphrase selected works of John Cage. The contest is open to both professional musicians and nonprofessionals active in the field of improvised music. The competition committee will look for works that present original and "fresh" perspectives on contemporary music and show the relevance and continuing appeal of John Cage’s music and ideas both within and outside the academic world. We hope to inspire artists working with various media to take up these ideas and develop them in ways harmonious with their pursuits. The competition will be announced and promoted in local and national media.
Submitted works will be judged by a jury consisting of the competition's curator and specialists in contemporary and improvised music as well as distinguished Cagean scholars. The winner of the competition will be awarded a prize and his work will be presented during the ceremony/concert closing the competition in September 2012.
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"Of what does not exist" - Krzysztof Knittel (Poland)
“Is writing a variation on the theme of a given piece the best means of its analysis? Nobody knows that until they give it a try. Both the themes and the form of my new composition are based on Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 4 and my own solo work free for MacWin. The motto of my piece Of what does not exist is taken from Cage’s lecture on communication: ‘Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?’” K. Knittel
Krzysztof Knittel (Poland)
Krzysztof Knittel composes computer and electroacoustic pieces as well as ballet music and theatre and film scores; he also creates audio installations and orchestral, choral and chamber music. As a composer and performer, he has given concerts in most European countries as well as in Asia and in the Americas. Between 1995-1998 he was the director of the Warsaw Autumn Festival of Contemporary Music and from 1999 to 2003 he was the president of the Polish Composers’ Union. A former vice-president of the Polish Music Council (2000-2005), he has been presiding over the Council since December 2005. In 2006 he founded the Ad Libitum International Festival of Improvised Music, which he has been in charge of since. He teaches at the Music University of Warsaw as well as the Music Academies in Łódź and Kraków.
In 1985 he received the Solidarity Prize for Music and in 1998 the prestigious award of the New York-based Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts ; in 2003 he received the Cyprian Norwid Prize and the Prize of the Polish Composers' Union, and in 2005 - the Silver Gloria Artis Medal as well as the Gold Guardian of National Memorials Medal.
„wind child Index” - eRikm (France), Dieb13 (Austria)
ohn Cage is their grandmother and Africa Bambaata is their grandfather. ERikm and dieb13 have been performing as turntable artists for many years and so have an ongoing history as a live-duo. They push the envelope and expand the possibilities of recorded, re-played and re-mixed sounds in their live-performances in various directions, thereby creating a high-energy congestion of musical history and sound apperception between shellac and digital sampling. During the course of the performance of "wind child Index" the will do what they always do, as their music would not exist without John Cage. Only this time they will do it even better...
eRikm (France)
Since 1992, eRikm has been expanding the possibilities of artistic experimentation on the international music scene. Quickly recognised as a virtuoso turntablist and sound artist (1996), he has been transgressing borders and exploring new territories and world-systems, equally comfortable in “independent" and "institutional" environments. Around the same time (1997), he developed an open and aspirational approach toward technology, both as a means of monetization of creativity and as an instrument of, production and diffusion of art.
He treats sounds as living organisms in constant flux, always open to the risk and delight of chance or sonic convergence. Exploring contradictions in his improvisations, he reaches new heights of intensity by trading on both the rational and the sensual, seriousness and play, anticipation and instinct.
dieb13 (Austria)
A Viennese avant-garde musician, dieb13 has also performed under the stage names of Takeshi Fumimoto, Echelon, Dieter Bohlen, and dieb14. Since the late 1980s he has worked continuously with a view to turning cassette players, vinyls, CDs and hard disks into instruments. In 1998, he contributed a track to Turntable Solos, a compilation released by the Japanese label Amoebic. Disguised as Takeshi Fumimoto, he has collaborated with Otomo Yoshihide, Christian Marclay and Masami Akita (aka Merzbow). For his first solo CD, Restructuring (2000), dieb13 remixed the contents of a whole experimental music festival. Having confirmed with this CD his mastery of the turntable, he quickly moved to other fields, stripping his sound of recognizable references by using record-less players and, eventually, the computer.